“No—”
“Come down. It’s gone.” She could not lift her arm. She had to take him somewhere safe before she collapsed. On the path nearby the mass of watching people loosened and began to flow away along the walks, losing interest. David was lowering himself out of the tree. He dropped to meet his shadow on the phony grass. His face was smeared with tears; his nose was running.
“Mama—”
She took his hand. “Hurry.” As fast as she could move she led him up the green slope to the gate.
In the crowded street beyond, she stopped, confused, her lungs working for breath. David pulled her on and she followed him. Her head began to pound. The streetlights hurt her eyes. When they reached the moving stair she stumbled.
“Mama, are you sick?”
The moving stair carried them down into the pit of the Planet. Someone behind her jostled her and her knees gave in and she caught herself against the rail sliding by. She was going to fall. Her feet were a mile below her.
“David—”
The street flew upward toward her, the steps sliding away into the floor, and she held her breath and walked forward onto the solid ground. “David.” She sat down on the floor in the street, her back to a wall. “Where is the hotel? Do you know?”
Promptly he reached his arm out and pointed. He tugged on her hand. “Come on—it’s not far.”
“Go find Papa.” She shut her eyes. She felt herself tumbling over headlong although she had not moved. “Go find Daddy. Find Daddy.” Her eyes opened, swimming. David was gone. A passage of hundreds of legs scissored past her along the street. The floor was warm. She could not get up. The warmth was blood. Someone passing kicked her. She doubled her legs up to her chest. Another hard blow struck her.
“Paula.”
She was lifted up into the safety of his arms.
“So help me, if I’d reached her five minutes later they’d have trampled her. These people stop for nothing.”
She took the warm cup in both hands and sipped tea. On her forearm the scab of the healed wound was peeling away. David scrambled onto the couch beside her and leaned on her. Saba came out of the kitchen with a bottle of champagne in one hand.
Over his shoulder, he said, “If I were any smarter I’d take Ybix and go home.”
Tanuojin filled the kitchen doorway. He was eating a sugar-nut. The rest of the crew was out hunting the dog. Paula gave her cup to David. When he had gone into the next room, she said, “That was no accident. Somebody waited until Sril was gone and set that dog on us and called it off after David was safe. It must have been trained. It didn’t attack me at all, just David.”
Saba drank deeply from the bottle. “You wanted to see which way Parine would jump.” He turned toward his lyo, in the kitchen doorway. “I suppose you’re against going after him, now?”
“Saba, that’s what they want, to force the judge to jettison the case.”
“At least then we could get out of this place,” Saba said. He tramped into the bedroom.
That night the police came to the hotel saying they had gotten an anonymous warning the Styths’ rooms were bombed, and made them clear the suite for nearly an hour while a squad of bomb experts went through the place. Paula sat in a booth in the back of the hotel bar, David asleep on her lap, while Saba drank whiskey and Tanuojin drank water.
“I haven’t gotten a full sleep since I’ve been here,” Tanuojin said, on her right.
Saba yawned. He lifted his glass, half-full of Scotch. “This place is strange. Besides all the people and the cameras and all that. It’s haunted or something, the whole Planet.” Paula leaned on him, her head on his shoulder, and shut her eyes.
“Parine thinks it is,” Tanuojin said. “That’s what they’re hunting for now, downstairs, General Gordon’s ghost.”
Paula opened her eyes again. She had not thought before that the bomb threat was anything other than a nuisance. Saba said, “I guess he believes we have that tape.”
The waiter came up silently and took their empty glasses and put down new ones, filled. David whimpered in his sleep. Paula closed her eyes.
“Do these things ever start on time?”
“I think it’s against the law,” Saba said.
Paula sat down in the straight chair. On the far side of the courtroom, Chi Parine and his assistants were talking in a knot. Today the little Martian lawyer wore a black suit, a brilliant red jacquard vest, red and black high-heeled boots.
“Please rise for the Bench.”
The spectators massed behind the railing stopped their roar of conversation. Everybody got up. Wu-wei came out of the little door in the back and sat, and they all sat. The case was read.
“Your Excellency,” Parine said. He strode forward, puffed up. He reminded her again of Machou. “Due to considerations of interplanetary security, the government of Luna is withdrawing the charges—”
His lips went on moving, but the crowd buried his voice in a bellow. Tanuojin leaped up onto his feet. The bailiff’s bell clanged steadily through the thunder of voices. Paula glanced at Saba.
“All this for nothing,” she said.
“Not quite.”
Wu-wei’s smooth face was smiling. He patted at the air with his hands, and the crowd began to quiet down. The bell stopped ringing.
“Yes, Parine,” the judge said. “You’re withdrawing which charges?”
Parine said, “All of them, Your Excellency. I want to point out that we’re doing this only because the case was leading into very sensitive security matters.”
Tanuojin put his hands on his belt. “You mean you can’t deal with Styths in this court.”
Wu-wei laid his forearms flat on the table. His eyes shifted from Parine to the Styth.
Parine said shortly, “What we’re saying is that due to considerations of—”
“There’s no universal law in your Universal Court if you can’t handle Styths.” Tanuojin swung around to face Wu-wei. “We are part of the same Universe.”
“Indeed we are,” Wu-wei said. “What has happened here, in and outside my courtroom, has helped me understand the incident at Luna very well.”
“We’re talking from different premises,” Tanuojin said.
“Maybe. But at the moment you are standing in my premises.” The judge smiled at his antique pun. “I have a verdict, which I will give in a moment.”
Tanuojin whirled around toward Paula. “How can he give a verdict if they’ve withdrawn the charges?”
“Your Excellency—” Parine bounded toward the Bench, tipped forward on his high-heeled boots. “Your Excellency, I protest this rash decision to render a verdict without any evidence.”
“I have evidence,” Wu-wei said. “I’m not blind, and I’m not incapable of reasoning, or I wouldn’t be here in the first place. The Ybix incident was part of a whole field. This trial has been another aspect of the same field. This isn’t the place to comment on people who aggravate the natural tensions between races and individuals for their personal ends, however grandiose, and I won’t do that. The Ybix incident was a practical exercise. General Gordon made a misjudgment, to which he was helped by a variety of people not even on trial here and for which he has suffered. Certainly neither of the two ships destroyed at Luna would have been shot down if not for Ybix’s presence, but Ybix had been there for nearly 240 hours without a problem, and therefore I conclude that without General Gordon’s miscalculation, the incident would not have occurred. I am holding Ybix responsible for one ship and General Gordon for the other. The eight men who died in the ships cannot be brought to life again by any piety or wit in this courtroom. They were soldiers and carried guns, and men who use force must accept it will be used against them. As for the rest of the charges, Mr. Parine of Mars ought to remember when he makes up cases that simple is best. Since Luna brought the case here and then withdrew it, Luna will pay the court charges.” He tapped his fingers on the tabletop. “As for Ybix, the trial ought to be punishment enough. Are there comments?”